Europe’s financial markets continue to hold their ground early Thursday ahead of the European Central Bank’s decision on monetary policy, even though analysts are mostly pessimistic that we’ll see decisive action from ECB president Mario Draghi and his colleagues on the governing council.

City analysts have been focusing on the Italian banking sector, utilities and transport stocks. Here’s our pick of today’s broker notes.

ING has taken a look at the Italian banking sector Thursday, saying these banks have one of the largest non-performing loans piles in the EU, while low profitability prevented provision growth to match that. As a result, ING’s number crunchers conclude that it is not possible to justify a buy recommendation in this sector.

They’ve therefore downgraded Intesa Sanpaolo to hold from buy, while initiating coverage on UBI Banca with a sell rating.